


contact

by Oparu



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, Family Fluff, Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-21
Updated: 2018-04-21
Packaged: 2019-04-25 17:04:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14383119
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Oparu/pseuds/Oparu
Summary: Phil can’t stop drawing Melinda while she’s pregnant. Total fluff with a side of family.





	contact

**Author's Note:**

> for my darling @imaginationallcompact, nothing but fluff and cute and dorky. (you didn’t request dorky, but it comes free with these two).  Fits into _Hold to the Now, the Here_ , at some point.

 

Phil can draw, a little. He’s always needed a hobby. Maybe it’s a remnant of the GH-325 and the carving that he returns to moving his fingers when he’s overwhelmed. Except this is the most wonderful kind of overwhelmed. Better than an alien city. 

The way her shirt hangs changes first. The fabric clings tighter to her breasts, while she complains about the bras that don’t fit and how heavy they’ve become. They fill up more of his hands, round against his palms and he can trace the blue lines beneath the surface of her skin, like rivers making a map. It’s the fabric that really catches him though, the shift in the wrinkles, in the tightness versus the fall.

He doodles during the meetings, filling the margins of his outlines and bullet points with the fall of fabric, and the curves of her breasts, the way her hair falls onto her collarbones, how that contrasts with her shirt, with that leather jacket she can no longer really close over her belly. 

She has a collection of jackets, mostly black, heavy, dark, and one by one they disappear into the back of her closet because her body doesn’t work with them now. The flat, muscular plane of her stomach has become curves beneath her t-shirts, lines and edges sloping, melding together, and all he can think of in his mind’s eye are curves. Graceful, sloping, full of the motion of fabric, with her tank-tops that cling tight and his t-shirts that still hide most of their baby. 

He really needs to get more clothes because some of his shirts migrate over to her half of the closet and don’t return. In the bath, she curls between his legs while he runs his hand over the curve of her belly, tracing taut skin while her hair sticks to his chest. 

“You’ve been drawing.”

He nuzzles her hair and nods, sighing. “I was listening.”

“I didn’t say you weren’t listening.” Toying with his knee, she settles in against his chest, letting his hand wander. “You used to draw my eyes.”

“Eyes are difficult, they always say you should start with eyes.”

“But now--”

“I love her,” he says, bringing Melinda’s hand with his own to her belly. “She’s here, and I guess I can’t sto thinking about her.”

“She looks like a gremlin.” 

Their last ultrasound looked like a mythical creature more than a baby, even though Smmons pointed out everything healthy and perfect in her development, their daughter was more strange than human. 

“This suits you.”

She snorts.

“The way you carry her is beautiful.”

“She’s another fifteen pounds of water and flesh that throws off my balance.”

“Your tai chi doesn’t look any different.”

Melinda flings bubbles back towards him, missing his face entirely. “You’re easily distracted, when you’re even awake.”

“I’ve always been distracted by you.”

“Now it’s her turn?” She means that as a joke, but she cuts to the truth of it. 

He’s enraptured with their daughter, even though she’s a curve of flesh, and a hardness beneath his hand, or a bubbling against Melinda’s ribs. He can’t feel her yet, not with any certainty. 

“I think so.”

Melinda’s breathing slows, and if she falls asleep on him again they’ll both be wrinkled gremlins by the time he wakes her up to get them out. He traces her belly, right to left, then top to bottom letting his palm feel out every centimeter of her swollen skin. 

He passes over her navel and she shifts, moving her hips. The water whispers and he moust have found something hard because the curve bends for a moment. Is that her head? Part of her butt? How could he know what part of their daughter brushed against her, and him? He can’t feel that yet, can he? Jemma said it could be soon, but she’s always careful to manage expectations, to give them windows rather than dates, and sometimes Phil wonders if she does it for herself as much as them. 

When their Baby Agent decides to communicate her presence, everyone will want to feel her and reply to her little motions with loving hands. 

He holds that in his mind while Melinda lets him dry her hair and comb it smooth. He imagines fingertips on her skin while she rubs lotion across her belly and hums her way closer to bed. He lies beside her, mind full of images while she squirms into place on her side. 

She misses sleeping her stomach, and when she sleeps on her back, the baby rises like a sun, altering the world her light falls upon. When Melinda’s asleep, he sits up, flicks on the light and digs out the old notebook from the nightstand. Lines become curves and smudges, darkness and shadows defining fingertips on skin. Jemma’s fingers carry her wedding ring, Melinda’s are strong and scarred, Daisy’s would be tentative, and she’ll have to hold her hand in place. Mack’s hands would cover their daughter entirely right now, eclipsing her with affection. Yoyo’s fingers would dance their greeting, but Fitz would also be shy. He’d need to be introduced. 

He fills pages, staining his fingers with charcoal before he’s satisfied enough to sleep. 

She kisses him awake before tai chi and he smiles up into May’s eyes. He hasn’t drawn them enough, they’re too beautiful for his clumsy attempts. 

“You were up late.”

“It was in my head.” 

Melinda nods, leafing through drawing after drawing, her smile bright and soft, like the morning sunlight in her hair. “Jemma?”

“You said her ring was cold.”

“It is.” Her smile falters for a moment on the drawing of Mack’s hand because he’s lost what they’re bringing into the world and she has to stop and breathe before she continues. “Fitz would fidget, you’re right.”

He sits up, yawning into his hand and wondering where he left the other one. It’s on the dresser, but he’s not getting up for it, not yet. She’s here.

Melinda stops with the last one, Daisy’s hands and his, holding hers in place. He didn’t realize the fingers acround Daisy’s were his own, wasn’t thinking about himself at all, but Melinda knows. 

“This is the only one you’re in.” She holds it up, smiling more vividly. “You and Daisy.”

“I know what my hand looks like.”

Lifting his hand from the sheets, she kisses his palm. “It’s my favorite.”

“No competition between left and right, makes it easy.”

She looks up to chide him with her eyes, but her smiles stays. “This is her getting to know everyone, isn’t it?”

“She’ll feel them first, hear them, I suppose but that was really hard to draw.”

Nodding safely, Melinda turns closer to him, resting her own hand on the curve that so fascinates him. “I’m not even sure I feel her yet.”

“She’ll get there.”

And she’ll be loved, so loved that their hands will shield her from all the darkness they’ve fought, all that doubt. She’ll know she’s adored from her first moment of life. 

“Come here,” she says, dragging him to her. She hugs him, kissing his mouth before letting his head drop to her belly. “Your father is very sentimental about you already,” she says to their daughter, not to him. 

“Of course I am,” he mutters to the baby.

“It’s kind of cute.”

Now he rolls his eyes. 

“Just imagine how much he’ll draw you when you’re really here.”

“I’ll be too sleep deprived.” 

“I’m sure you’ll find a way.”

She strokes his hair before he kisses her belly. “You’re part of a family who loves you, and as soon as you’re ready to say hello, they’re all here.”

Melinda squeezes his shoulder, at a loss for words. He rubs her belly with his thumb, slipping his hand beneath her shirt to the warmth of her skin. Tracing aimless patterns, he shuts his eyes and imagines baby fingers, wrapping around so many fingers, and their baby’s head cradled in pairs of hands full of affection. 

“We’ll wait.” 


End file.
